Shizuoka First-Flush Sencha

Sencha is Japan's everyday green tea: sun-grown leaf, steamed soon after picking, then rolled into thin dark-green needles. This first-flush sencha from Shizuoka tastes of cut grass and young greens, with a sweet, savory, faintly marine finish. Brewed in a kyusu at 75°C.

Origin & Story

The method that made sencha

Before the eighteenth century most Japanese leaf tea was coarse and brown: new leaves, old leaves and stems were boiled or steamed together and dried. In 1738 Nagatani Sōen, a tea grower in Yuyadani in Ujitawara, south of Kyoto, presented a better way after years of trials. He steamed only fresh young leaf, then rolled and dried it by hand on a hoiro, a table covered with thick washi paper and warmed from below by charcoal. The tea came out green, with a bright color and a fresh, grassy scent. The method, called aosei, spread across Japan and is still the basis of how sencha is made, though machines now do the rolling.

The steaming is the step that matters most. It stops the leaf's enzymes from oxidizing it, and how long it lasts shapes the cup. Light steaming, asamushi, takes roughly half a minute and gives a clear, pale tea with whole needles. Deep steaming, fukamushi, runs from about a minute to two or more and breaks the leaf into smaller pieces, so the tea brews a cloudy, deep green with less astringency. Ordinary sencha sits between them.

Shizuoka and its tea

Shizuoka, on the Pacific coast between Tokyo and Nagoya, has been Japan's largest tea prefecture for most of the modern era. By one estimate it grew about 40 percent of the country's tea at the height of its lead, and its tea fields cover hills and plateaus across the prefecture.

The tree on most of those hills comes from Shizuoka too. In 1908 Sugiyama Hikosaburō, a farmer and tea breeder in Abe district, selected a bush he named Yabukita. It proved hardy, reliable and good for sencha, and it still covers about two thirds of Japan's tea fields. When you taste a standard sencha, you are very often tasting Yabukita.

The balance is shifting. In 2024 Kagoshima, in southern Kyushu, overtook Shizuoka in crude tea output for the year, about 27,000 tonnes against 25,800, though Shizuoka still picked more spring tea.

The first flush

The first picking of the year, ichibancha, is the new spring growth, and in Shizuoka it falls from late April into early May. The leaf is tender and sweet, with a savory edge that later pickings lose. The very first tea of the season is sold as shincha, new tea, and is prized for its fresh aroma. Later pickings, second flush in early summer and bancha after that, are larger, tougher and cheaper.

What it tastes like

Open a bag of first-flush sencha and the aroma comes first: cut grass, young greens, a hint of sea air. The liquor is clear yellow-green. In the cup it is bright and sweet, with a light savory taste and a clean, slightly marine finish, and a little astringency that keeps it from being flat.

Brewing it

A kyusu, the side-handled Japanese pot with a built-in strainer, is the traditional way. Use about 5 g of leaf for 200 ml of water cooled to around 75°C and steep for a minute to a minute and a half, then pour out every drop so the leaf does not sit in water. Water at the boil scalds the leaf and brings out bitterness; cooler water keeps the sweetness. Brew again right away with slightly hotter water for a shorter time, around 20 to 30 seconds, because the leaf is already open. The second cup is often brisker and more savory than the first, and a third is usually worth making.

Reading the Flavor Profile

These values are comparative editorial positions within our own catalog, calibrated so entries can be ranked against each other. They are not laboratory measurements.